Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Today as I drove into the office, I noticed my fingernails
were long.And by “long” I mean “a
little bit of that white part showing.”I was overcome with an intense desire to swing the car around in a
violent U-Turn.My immediate death would
have been worth it.Instead, I simply
gnawed on them like a hamster going after a delicious food pellet.

Maybe I’m not making myself clear.I dislike long fingernails.

This is not an OCD weirdness shared by Elijah.He prefers to slink around our house, Bela
Lugosi style.His nails are crazy
long.Some days I think they look like
that Shrindhar Chillal guy from Guinness Book of World Records.By the way, if you are the kind of person who
would get in a car accident over fingernails, do not Google “Shrindhar Chillal.”

Anyhoo, Eli refuses to let us clip his nails.At the very mention of it he runs screaming
from the room.I have to literally hold
him down to get a clipper on him.He
kicks, he cries, he jerks his hand out of my grasp over and over.

A week or so ago, I was sitting on his chest and
administering a clipping when he jerked his hand out of my grasp.I angrily snatched his finger and proceeded
to clip the end of it off.Which I’ll
use as my Father Of The Year submission.Blood.Screams.

Eli pointed the bloody stump at me and shouted, “You did
that on purpose!”

“I’m so sorry.It was
an accident.I didn’t do it on purpose,”
I said.Wait.Did I?After a quick self-exam I
confirmed I did not do it on purpose.

I begged him for forgiveness and he forgave me after I said
he could play on the Kindle after lights out.

But here’s the thing.He still had four long fingernails.And that just cannot exist in the world.If I was ever going to sleep again, I had to get at them.

Luca looked on in honest curiosity as I wrestled Eli to the
ground and muttered “Father of the Year” over and over.

Thursday, February 20, 2014

The other night, I raced home only to find we had zero food
in the house.Cute, animated mice were
cutting lima beans up into little pieces to make them last longer.I begged Hannah to stay with the boys another
½ hour and flew to Jewel to fill my cart with frozen pizzas, pizza snacks and
pizza in a cup.

By the time I got home it was way past bedtime.Any and all requests for stories or glasses
of water or requests to play on the kindle were quickly and violently squashed.I left their room in my usual way, by telling
Elijah and Luca I loved them more than
anything in the world and if they so much as stuck a toe out of their room I’d
chop it off.

I then went about a productive evening while Diana worked
late.I’m pretty sure it involved volunteering
at a soup kitchen or sewing a quilt and definitely not drinking too much wine
and playing xbox for four straight hours.

I got sleepy and Diana still wasn’t home, so I decided to go
bed with Luca on the bottom bunk.I love
his little hot water heater body and how he unconsciously burrows under my fat
in search of the most comfortable place on the mattress.

I dozed off and awoke hours later covered in sweat.No, wait.It wasn’t sweat.It was
urine.Yep, my son had whizzed all over
me.

Oh yeah!I forgot to
put a nighttime diaper on him.Dumb dumb
dumb.I was saturated in my own
stupidity.As I removed Luca’s offending
clothes he thrashed in his sleep.I
shushed him and told him his father was a moron.

I carried him into our bed and placed him next to
Diana.He immediately assumed his
official diagonal bed hogging position.Rather than spend the night in a war of attrition over Central
Bedlandia, I grabbed my pillow and went back to the boys’ room.

Luca’s bed was a no-man’s land.No living thing could survive in that
cesspool.So I opted to sleep with Eli
in the top bunk.Not a great idea
considering my added weight put us over the limit expressly warned against in
Swedish.But I figured if the whole
thing came crashing down we’d just land in Lake Peepee.

I climbed the ladder, shoved Eli over and sunk back into the
bed.And into a pool of Eli’s
urine.He had also wet the bed.Big time.Hmmm.Maybe a nighttime diaper
for him would have been a good idea too.

I changed wet boy number 2 and placed him into bed with his mother
and fellow pee peer.

I then manhandled Grover the dog onto our couch and used him
as a non wet blanket.A doggie grin
crossed his muzzle as if he had planned the whole thing.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

The other night, boys won their nightly game of “How Far Can
I Push Dad Before He Loses It?”Within a
five minute period, I had removed TV rights, video game rights, ice cream
rights and the right to breathe oxygen in my house.Because oxygen is for boys who don’t pee in
the tub.

We all knew my threats were hollow and we’d be pals in the
morning, but I felt the need to smooth things over.

I took a deep breath and explained, “Guys, I’m sorry I
yelled at you.Sometimes you drive me
nuts.But that doesn’t mean I don’t love
you.I love you more than anything.I mean, I’d die for you.”

Friday, February 7, 2014

This morning, I stumbled past a sleeping Grover and found
Elijah at our computer.He was trying to
type in “Marvel Games” into Google.His
search read “Marvahl Gimes.”I did a
quick calculation predicting if that search would result in pornography (80%
chance) and tussled his hair.

He and I spoke not a word.This was Eli’s special alone time.He’s been waking up earlier and earlier to play on one of the four
devices in our home he’s mastered.

We allow it because, well, he lets us sleep in.Sleep is more valuable than whatever
attention deficit disorder is happening behind his eyeballs.

The only time things get weird is when Eli assumes Diana’s
identity on her iPhone.No, he doesn’t
don a black t-shirt wig like I do when I impersonate her.He mainly pretends to be her to fill his
social calendar.In lieu of actual
spelling, he uses Siri to do his dirty work.

He’s had long voice to text conversations with our neighbors
that begin with, “Hi. This is Eli’s mommy.Can Eli come over and play today?But without Luca?”

I’ve received a few texts from this faux Diana.“This is your wife Diana.We should take Eli to McDonald’s.”Wait.That one may be legit.

Diana has taken to hiding her phone so she doesn’t wake up
to road trip plans to Disney, or worse, play dates at Chuck E Cheese.

On another note, there was a great outpouring of support for
yesterday’s post detailing Elijah’s first wiener drawing.A few of you asked if we still had the
original drawing.Unfortunately, Diana
threw it out.And probably burned
it.And sprinkled the ashes on her
original dreams of having a girl child.

Thursday, February 6, 2014

The day?Saturday,
February 1.The time?7:45pm.The event?Elijah Steven Hamann
drew his first wiener.

Like first steps or first words, the first wiener drawing
marks a turning point in his life.And I
am honored to have been there.

After baths, Eli was busy in our kid art room.Whatever he was working on was important, yet
he needed complete privacy.The few
times I tried to check on him were met with snaps of, “Don’t come in here,
Daddy.”

Like any encouraging father, I said, “Fine.Be that way.I’ll just go tickle Luca until he pees.”

And pee he did.Just
as I was about to shut down Eli’s covert activity and force him to go to bed,
he called from the living room, “Daddy, come quick!”

I found him standing on our couch with two pieces of paper
taped to his pajamas.He was laughing
hysterically as he said, “Daddy, my pj’s ripped off!”

I squinted and looked at the paper stuck to him.Up top, he had drawn a pair of nipples.Representing his nipples.

But down below was the piece de resistance.He had drawn some kind of belt with a
Batman-esc belt buckle.And a
wiener.

“Is…is that your wiener?”I asked.

Eli couldn’t answer because he was laughing so hard.Luca joined in and doubled over with laughter.

But then I knelt down and told him, soberly, “This is the
funniest thing you have ever done.This
might be the funniest thing I have ever seen.I love you.”

Eli kept laughing and I gave them both dishes of ice
cream.I said it was because of the
wiener drawing.The glorious wiener
drawing.

I excitedly told Diana when she got home and I told several
colleagues in the following days, but I couldn’t seem to accurately describe
the magic of that moment.Some friends
even went so far as to say rewarding an obscene drawing with ice cream might
not be the best parenting method.

Phooey on that.

I did, however, sit down with Eli two days ago and explain
that, while his wiener drawing was the funniest thing ever, he shouldn’t draw
them at school or draw them for the girls next door or show them to his
teacher.Not everyone would appreciate
his genius.